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In the 1600s, European settlers to New Hampshire were from England. In 1719, a new group of settlers came here. They were known as the Scots-Irish. A group of 16 families founded a settlement in Nutfield, which later became the town of Londonderry. Over the next several decades, thousands of Scots-Irish came to New England, and many of them passed through Nutfield as they decided where to live. New Hampshire has a strong tradition of Scots-Irish culture, and many people here are descended from the Scots-Irish. The Scots-Irish in Londonderry also planted the first potatoes in North America. 

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When New Hampshire was first founded, it shared a government with Massachusetts. They both had the same governor, and at one point, there was even talk about making all of New Hampshire a county in Massachusetts! Most people living in New Hampshire did not want to be part of Massachusetts, and they asked King George II of England to keep them separate and give them their own governor. The king agreed and appointed Benning Wentworth the governor of New Hampshire. Wentworth was from an old New Hampshire family, and under his rule, New Hampshire became completely separate from Massachusetts. 

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By the 1760s, many people in New Hampshire—and America—were getting tired of being British colonies and having to pay taxes to the British government. In 1765, the British imposed a new tax called the Stamp Act, which put a tax on books, newspapers, documents, playing cards, and anything made of paper. People all over America protested against the new tax, including in Portsmouth, which was the biggest city in New Hampshire at that time. This protest was an important first step in convincing the people of New Hampshire that they needed to be independent from Great Britain.  

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One of the British laws that the people of New Hampshire did not like involved pine trees! The British government declared that all the big pine trees in New Hampshire belonged to the king, who used them as ships’ masts for the British navy. Many people in New Hampshire ignored the law, but then a group of people in Goffstown and Weare got caught cutting down some big pine trees for their own use. They had to pay a fine for breaking the law. Some of them paid the fine, but the people living in Weare refused to pay it. When the sheriff came to arrest them, they ran him out of town in the middle of the night. This became known as the Pine Tree Riot. It is an example of how the people of New Hampshire were frustrated by being under British rule.

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In December 1774, an American patriot named Paul Revere rode to Portsmouth, New Hampshire, to warn his friends that the British army was going to send more soldiers and supplies to Fort William and Mary in Portsmouth Harbor. The Americans wanted to keep the British army out of New Hampshire, so they captured Fort William and Mary from the few British soldiers who were stationed there. This action was the first conflict between the Americans and the British in what would become known as the American Revolution. 

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On January 4, 1776, New Hampshire became the first British colony to declare its independence from Great Britain. Since New Hampshire was now an independent state, its leaders wrote a new constitution for it, which laid out how the government would function. New Hampshire, therefore, formed the first state government in America. 

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In the summer of 1777, the British army launched a massive campaign through the Hudson River Valley in New York and Vermont to divide the New England colonies from the rest of America. Fighting between the British and Americans went on all summer, but in the middle of August, New Hampshire’s General John Stark arrived in southern Vermont with a large group of New Hampshire soldiers. They fought a portion of the British army near a town called Bennington and won. Stark’s victory kept the British from gathering supplies and cost the British army many men who were captured, wounded, or killed. The British defeat at Bennington weakened them. A few months later, the Americans won an even bigger victory against the British at the Battle of Saratoga, which was the turning point of the American Revolution. 

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New Hampshire used to have enslaved people. The first enslaved people in America were kidnapped in Africa and brought to the New World where they were sold for their labor. They had to work for their masters without being paid, and they weren't allowed to make their own decisions about their lives. Their children were also enslaved, and their grandchildren and so on. Most enslaved people in America lived in the South, but even colonies in the North, like New Hampshire and Massachusetts, had enslaved people. During the American Revolution, when people were talking about the importance of freedom and equality, many enslaved people started to question why they weren’t also free. In Portsmouth, 20 enslaved people wrote a very well-crafted petition to the new state government. They argued that if America was a land of freedom, then they should not have to live as slaves. The state government did not act on the petition or free them from slavery. 

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When the 13 American colonies declared themselves independent from Britain, they had to form a government for their new country. They had to decide how political power was going to be shared between the states and the federal government and develop a process for passing laws that would govern the new country. At first they wrote a document called the Articles of Confederation, but the Articles didn’t work very well and they set them aside. Next they wrote a document called the Constitution. For the Constitution to go into effect, 9 of the 13 states had to agree to it, which is called ratifying. In June 1788, New Hampshire ratified the new Constitution and was the 9th state to do so. Even though other states ratified the Constitution too, New Hampshire’s vote meant the new Constitution could go into effect. 

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In 1796, an enslaved woman named Ona Judge ran away from her master in the South and came to New Hampshire. Her master was George Washington, the president of the United States. Washington owned many slaves at his plantation in Virginia, and he wasn’t willing to just let Ona go. Instead, he tried to catch her and bring her back to slavery. Slavery was not very popular in New Hampshire by this point, though, and New Hampshire authorities refused to help Washington capture her, even if he was the president. Although Ona always worried about being recaptured, she never was, and lived the rest of her life in New Hampshire. 

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There were no big roads in New Hampshire during the 1700s like the highways we have today. Instead, all the roads in the state were local, linking one village to another. Each town was responsible for building and repairing their own roads, and sometimes the towns didn’t do a great job of it. In the late 1700s, some investors got together and decided to build a nice, big road that would run across the middle of the state, from Portsmouth to Concord. They called the new road the New Hampshire Turnpike. Although it was a toll road, meaning people had to pay to use it, the road was in much better condition than the smaller, local roads. The turnpike was wider than most roads and had fewer potholes. It made traveling from one part of the state to another much faster and easier. Soon other turnpikes were built in New Hampshire, linking most of the regions of the state together in a road network.